LANSING ? Lack of human intelligence in the Middle East is the reason why the United States hasn’t caught al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, U.S.

Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy, told a special Sept. 11 meeting of the Michigan Homeland Security Consortium.

Rogers, a Republican from Michigan?s 8th Congressional District (mid Michigan), said the Central Intelligence Agency was barred in the 1990s from hiring less savory spies because of mandates from the U.S. government that sanitized the intelligence service. Rogers said it is sometime necessary to affiliate with bad people to get good intelligence.

As a result, the U.S. relied to heavily on technology to monitor what was happening with enemies and potential enemies and often was caught napping, such as in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Now much more emphasis is placed on getting feet on the streets even if those feet may be a little soiled.

?The CIA was gutted, and now we?re paying the price,? Rogers told about 50 delegates to the Michigan Homeland Security Consortium at a special meeting in Lansing to mark the fifth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania.

Rogers, a former FBI agent, said the United States and its allies are getting closer to catching up with bin Laden, in part through greater cooperation from Pakistan (human intelligence) and better technology deployed in the field.

The single biggest improvement in U.S. intelligence efforts has been communications among the CIA, FBI, police, security and other law enforcement agencies that now share human intelligence information that never made it outside these agencies? walls in the past, he said.

But building better technology to defend the United States against terrorist threats also is key.

?We can never hire enough security people, enough border guards to protect our country,? Rogers said. ?We need the innovation of technology from the private industry to help the United States win this war on terrorism. For our children, this is an important war we must win.?

For more information on the Michigan Homeland Security Consortium, click on MIHSC.Org